I am Shawn Baldwin

 

The Creation of life?

I am not a writer.  I should state that first and foremost.  I am the spelling and grammar equivalent of a 3^rd grader and that is me being kind to myself.  I have no idea how to set background, when I read King, and I read a lot of King, I am amazed he can put you right in the story.  Read “Wizard and Glass” and tell me if Stephen King is a twisted mind or a genius.  The man puts you into the Fall Season.  I cannot do that.  I write in either simple short sentences, that make me sound like a “special” individual or I write in run-ons that can be long as full paragraphs.  Though, I have always wanted to be a writer, I am not, I a hack.  It is and always will be a hobby for me.  However, I think as I have told you over the last month, my mind can’t turn off.   

 

 

I am Shawn Baldwin, not Kody Ransom….

First, I have to say I am a man with two brothers, Bobby and Shawn.  So when I write this I want to preface this by saying, the character of Shawn Baldwin is not in any way shape or form based on or related to my baby brother.  The name much like the character came to me in a dream.  If I ever write about my brothers it will be pretty clear, because Bobby will be referred to simply as Jr. and Shawn and Dinger or in the informal the Ding.  I don’t know why I have to preface this was but I feel the need.  Probably because I am not only overly sensitive, but also afraid one brother might read this and think what a dick he thinks this of me, or what he won’t name a character after me.  The truth is I didn’t come up with the name Shawn for this character.  The Truth is the name Shawn Baldwin came from a dream, the dream we will get to.  Much like many names I come up with as a spinner of tales, I have no idea where they come from.  I mean Kody Ransom I do, it was actually a baseball player and I saw the name at Pac Bell Park, and I loved it, and I took it.  Baseball players seem to have cool names. Anyway let us begin. 

I will try to leave out any spoilers from tales I hope to spin.  However, I think some realizations have been made over the last few weeks, and these realizations have opened up many other doors and windows into my mind, heart, and soul.  Now that I think about it why would I talk about characters that I have created but never really written about and shared openly? I do it because I think I have too. I think I am supposed too.   I think KA has decreed it. 

Who is Shawn Baldwin?

“Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right”

-          Grateful Dead

“Scarlet Begonias”

“So now I'm goin' back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives.
Don't know how it all got started,
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.”

-          Bob Bylan

“Tangled up in Blue” as performed by the Jerry Garcia Band

 

I don’t remember the date, but I remember the year, it was 1997, and I had lost my mind.  I often refer to the period as my first death.  I honestly know that I have been dead twice.  I came close to being dead a third time, but I think we are righting that ship.  When I say I was dead, what I really mean is I was some awkward combination of sick, depressed, and stressed out, obsessive and most of all I had lost my ability to dream.  Not in the literally sense.  I’ve that was the case, and then I would not be writing this passage, I mean I had lost my ability to create and dream.  I was so fucked up that I couldn’t bring myself to dream.  I could see no light at the end of the tunnel.  I had lost my shit and I wanted out.  Do you have any idea what it is like to life with the fact you think you have lost your mind? I do.  Aye, so I do.  It was the spring, summer, and early fall of 1997 and I was 21 and my mind was truly broken.  I won’t go into the details. That is a tale for another day.  However, what I can say is forget Limbo, for I was in Hell.  The second time I was dead was in the early 00’s in San Francisco, but WW, Ison, and TNT pulled me out of that barren wasteland, again not the point of today’s tale.  What I will say is in the summer of 1997 was the worst time of my life.  I know that.  Even worse than anything I am dealing with today.  However, I recovered.  I have accomplished so much since then.  But it was dark.  The brink of insanity always is.  What I know from that period of time more than anything is this, the Mind is all powerful.  It is the ultimate Supreme Being and man should never, ever, underestimate that power.

I often refer to what I am going to tell you as my Pulp Fiction Dream.  It’s dark and murky, and my vision swirls.  Look, writing is my hobby, not my job; I am not good at it, so work with me.  I am trying to tell you about a dream that happened 1997.  Ok, let’s just say this in the dream my name was Shawn Baldwin, and I looked a lot like Travolta in Get Shorty, that’s right baby, I am bringing Chili Palmer into the mix! You out there Hoye, because I went there, now let’s see if I can bring Kelly Gruber into the mix. Anyway, difference it isn’t Travolta it is the Kid and there is something wrong with my eyes.  I don’t know how I can see my eyes, but I can. 

They say the eyes are the window to the soul.  They say you can tell a lot about someone form the eyes.  I have always agreed with this.  I think you can look into someone’s eyes and see their hope, their fear, and to some extent their state in life.  The issue with Shawn Baldwin was his eyes were void of all this.  He was slipping into the ever eternal darkness from which none of us can ever awake.  I know he carries in him a demon as the Master King once called it, a demon named Heroine.   At this point in time in my life I had heard of said Demon because I was through The Gunslinger, the first book of the Dark Tower Cycle.  Not only that I had exiled the 2^nd book to the bottom of my entertainment center in my bedroom at home where it would stay until I moved to California.  Where it would stay until, I picked it back up in Sunnyvale when I was at NetIQ and it was ’03 or ’04.  I also didn’t realize I knew someone using sweet lady H, however, both of these stories for another time.  The point is the very reason I put that book down was the very reason I loved this dream.  I was dancing with Mr. Brownstone.  I loved Shawn Baldwin because he came to me broken, and with dying eyes. 

The dream would go on to tell me the following things.  Shawn had no immediate family, other than an estranged wife.   Whom, he hadn’t seen for years.  What we know about her from the original dream is her name was Kelly.  She was portrayed in my dream by Renee Zellweger.  He loved her, but he couldn’t be with her, because of his demons.  WE also know that he was living far away from Indiana, but had to go back for a wedding and at the wedding his life changed, because he found out his estranged wife was hiding a son from him.  His heart filled with joy and dread.  The joy was for the son whom he could love.  The dread was for the son he brought into this world, the son who could carry the same demons he had. 

I remember after the wedding Shawn killing.  However, he hated it, but he did it.  He was a hit man. He used and killed, used and killed and each time he used and killed some part of him died.   The entire time his eyes were dying.  They would lose life over and over. 

When I awoke form the dream, I knew something special in my life had occurred. To some extent a child was born because when I awoke Shawn Baldwin was with me.